Chapter Nine: La Morsure du Bete
What happens: Ready for the Whomping Willow incident, anyone?
Main Characters: Remus J. Lupin, Sirius Black
Subsidiary Characters: James Potter, Lilly Evans, Peter Pettigrew; Severus Snape, Lucius Malfoy; Professor Voldemort, Professor McGonagall; Etienne Ibert; Hector Karnaugh (ooh! New character!)
Couples You Will Find In This Fic (Whether You Like It Or Not): Sirius Black/Remus Lupin; James Potter/Lilly Evans; Severus wanting Remus's body; a hint or two of Lucius Malfoy/Severus Snape; other relationships of both a homosexual and heterosexual nature
Dedication: This chapter is dedicated not only to all my reviewers, as every chapter is, but in honor of a certain dedicated and wonderful few who always, always rock my socks. Firstly, to Magical Me, whose last review left me a melting mass of overwhelmed pride. Also, to Emmy the Cat once more, for all that you review was perfection and your defense of my fic was both intelligent and worthy of being my knight in shining armor, or something like that. Also to Avalon, who didn't review my latest chapter, but has review every other chapter so wonderfully that I feel I must give proper credit where credit is due. And everyone who has emailed me, reviewed my work faithfully or even once, sent me pretty graphics (yes, Ana, you know who you are) or even cared in the slightest -- it's all for you, people. My reviewers. Always. Keep reviewing! I love it. :D
This is: chapter nine of a work in progress. Like all my works in progress, it is possible that you will be waiting a very long time between installments, or they could come out daily in a psychotic and rather frightening fashion. Do Not Worry! Just take it as it comes, and feel free to send me demanding fan mail (all demanding fan mail should be sent to IremusJLupin@aol.com) if you feel you've been waiting an egregiously long time. Demanding fan mail is annoying sometimes, but on the whole it makes me feel incredibly cool. And that's what it's all about, right? Oh yes. And I am also constantly updating chapters that have already been uploaded, whenever I find a hideous spelling error or a problem with grammar. So check back often.
C&C: is demanded. Or, you know, desperately longed for, in a rather pathetic sense. Just gimme some of that good ol' fashioned R&R, and let me know you actually do want to see more of my work.
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Chapter IX: La Morsure du Bete
The house was a chilling one, cold because every corner was so, cold as porcelain and mahogany and silk. Especially in winter, where the frigid winds crept along your flesh and gave you childish goosebumps in the night, the house -- the mansion, rather -- was like a house made of ice, buried in a frozen tundra, untouched by humanity for years. Though every inch, down to ever last corner, was engraved with rich detail and filled with expensive antiques, there was no comfort to be found in all the long, silent hallways, or in any of the ancient sculptures that loomed at you from walls. Every room was designed to make you know how expensive it had been. Every room was meant to isolate you from yourself, as well as from the rest of the world.
The house was just as Severus's own, more of a marble tomb than a place to live or call your home. Between its walls were the velvet of lush couches, the silk of elegant cushions, the polished mahogany of desks and sweeping banisters and the marble of each headless, armless, helpless statue. There were no people living there -- rather, Septimus and Delphinia Malfoy were merely cheap replicas of the pieces of art they had chosen to decorate their mansion with: brittle, frigid, and without any soul.
So such a stay in the Malfoy residence was therefore no vacation, at least not in Severus's eyes. Once, in the time when Lucius's eyes had burned with a fire wrought of ice that could enchant, persuade, enrapture, it would have been heaven to have stayed there. Now, inch by inch, the blond was turning to stone, as if the great Medusa of his inheritance had reared her head before him, and he was at last powerless to protect himself. Vespasia and Cyril Snape were just the same as Delphinia and Septimus, uncaring, unfeeling, unmoved. Severus found he had no choice but to keep to himself or to the Malfoy's vast collection of untouched books, watching life move around him, watching the servants clean and the house elves scurry underfoot with a displaced lack of emotion that was not cruelty and was not enjoyment, something caught like a cobweb to linger in between the two.
All in all, the place left him absolutely cold, which meant, he assumed, there was some hope for him yet. After all, if he continued to long for more, encourage the secret ache within his chest, then he was not lost to this way of life his family and his family's friends seemed to take great pride in. Severus had never embraced it. As time wore on, as they spoke of news from Voldemort and his followers intermittently with tales of disgrace and falls from power, Severus found himself to be disgusted with it. Above everything else, he wanted to break free, but had never placed enough store in himself to try and do so.
"We have had word from him only last month," Delphinia would to Vespasia over tea, trying to prove something with her long nose held high and her pinky in an arrogant hook, "from the South of France." With a little laugh, Vespasia would try to save face, tossing glossy black hair over one shoulder.
"Vacationing, is he?" she would query, still tittering to herself at some foolish joke. "How very like him, after all."
Their voices were like gold or silver, trying to outshine the other with glossy, cultured value. They were beautiful women, yes, but that was only half the game. The other was to one-up their tea companion with who knew whom better, who had more of what than the other, who had their claws sunk more tightly into the flesh of social life.
Severus had grown sick of it, keeping to his room, though Lucius could often find him there, or the library, amidst the smell of dusty yet incredibly expensive books, none of them muggle authored. That was the only area in which the library was lacking, as if those muggle born wrote nothing of worth. Think of Shakespeare, Severus wanted to scream to them, think of Faulkner, just think! But they weren't the sort of people who looked past the bridge of their own noses to the world beyond, judging everything relative to the basis of their own self-inflated self-importance. It was revolting, but ultimately, it was just pitiable.
But once he lost himself in a book, Severus could forget everything that haunted him from the outside world. It was glorious, how the play of words could ensnare him better than anything else, gloss over his skin, hide him away from all that he hated about his situation, his lack of family, his lack of friends. A truly good book could so transport him that he wouldn't hear anything, not even the incessant beating of his own heart, not even the steady rhythm of his own breaths. And once he blocked such things out, he was no longer himself, no longer Severus Snape, disliked in school, displaced even in his own home. He was whoever the book told him he was, everything dictated by the turning of the page.
"So that's where you are." Lucius's voice, high and lilting and proud, oddly feminine for all his masculine, arrogant egoism. The slim body that dropped gracefully down to fold long legs at Severus's side, peer over his shoulder. "Reading about a war, how glumly like you."
"I," Severus said, but he faltered and shrugged faintly, snapping the book shut. It was a loud, decisive motion, perhaps more indicative of how much he wanted to shut everyone out than he had wanted it to be. Lucius frowned. He did even that delicately.
"So very antisocial, of course," he went on, that frown playing in his voice. "Mother was wondering what you're up to; so has yours."
"I'll be down for supper," Severus replied, his voice helpless, too helpless to be cold. They all had such conceit as Severus did not. They could manage to look down their noses at people, even by speaking a few words. It was a talent that Severus simply did not have the ego to master.
"Yes, and then you'll be gone again. You're simply not entertaining at all. It would be so easy," Lucius continued, "to keep them from talking about your lack of proper sociability, if you just stopped rotting in the library for an hour or two each day."
So easy, Severus thought, but a far cry from what I want in life -- to fool people into thinking I'm one thing, then doing another behind closed doors.
And another, more nagging voice in Severus's head continued that thought, just as Lucius does with you. He would never forfeit his place for anything of yours.
And the deepest part of it, rarely ever put to words, taunted him still, you're never as important as social standing, not with anyone, especially not with him.
"It's easy for you," Severus said carefully, "but it never has been for me, and it never will." He tilted his face away. Lucius had a habit of drawing himself so, so close, a proximity he knew was always too close for comfort, one that got Severus agitated and nervous and gave Lucius always the upper hand, whenever they spoke, especially whenever they argued. Severus had never once in his life won an argument with Lucius Malfoy, nor did he ever expect to. It was one of the facts of life, that Severus lost, and Lucius won.
And still, Severus loved him, with a fierce adoration wrought of worship, which was itself born from knowing Lucius was all Severus could never be. He could tell himself a million, an eternity of times that he didn't want it, that he didn't want to please, that he didn't want to assuage pride or have any of his own. He could try and convince himself with all the workings of his mind that he would not grow so self-satisfied as to crush others under his feet without noticing once, simply because of his own power, his own respected and awe-inspiring place.
But the heart and the mind were two different things, and in the depths of him, Severus knew just what he wanted, and that involved never again being a disappointment to anyone. If he had as much confidence in all of him as Lucius had in his little finger, he would have perhaps been content. He was jealous by nature -- or, his nature had been cultivated since birth to be as such. It didn't matter, now, just as it didn't matter what Lucius had the potential to be as opposed to what he was now. What was, was, and Severus could not keep his mind from lingering on that shockingly pale face, beautiful in its cruelty, lovely in its powerful naivete. It was Lucius, and Severus was jealous of that, envious of all that he possessed now and would possess later, and hated him for all his control. Such three emotions were, in the unfortunate scheme of things, so very close to love that it was impossible, sometimes, to escape crossing the line from one into the other. Once you had crossed, it was also nearly impossible to cross back.
Severus bowed his head, half in defeat, half to hide his face from the other boy. Lucius scowled deeper, sensing correctly that his friend's attention was no longer with him, and perhaps had not been since the very beginning of the conversation.
"Severus." Lucius came a little closer, torturously close, knowing how hard it was for Severus to pull away, knowing how on edge it made him to have someone else invading the boundaries of his terribly important personal space. He was close to winning -- and he always won -- and felt strength surge in him at that knowledge. "Severus," he said again, and then a sly grin spread over his face with wicked rapidity, "Severus. Are you jealous?"
There was a chilling silence fitting to the scene in which Lucius felt against his fingers the wonderful totality of his own power. It was intoxicating, such overwhelming hubris, so close to being completely unjustified.
He thinks he owns me, Severus thought. A surge of resentment and indignance rose up within his throat like bile, but soon after it ebbed away weakly, slipping the sieve of his heart to leave him feeling ashen and worn. He had to fight off the urge to bow his head again -- canine, in its simplicity, the way a mere pup would show its submission to an elder, or the way a wolf would bow down before the dominant leader of the pack. He thinks he own me because I have allowed him to treat me as his possession, Severus realized finally, and where does the blame lie there? With his actions, or with mine?
He had no answer for himself and, he realized suddenly, no answer for Lucius, either. While he could postpone the search for understanding within himself he could not postpone replying to Lucius Malfoy, for the blond would not accept such silence. He swallowed, feeling something stick hard and sharp in his throat as he did so.
"I'm not." He tried to make his own words sound anything more than what they were, weak and unconvincing. It was a half-hearted attempt, but at least he had made one. Lucius's eyes glittered terribly, and Severus shrunk under the look, reduced to a creature no bigger than a house-elf in the path of those clear blue eyes. Aryan, Severus noted, proud and noble but also malevolent, focused and drunk upon their own nobility.
"What are you jealous of, Severus?" The tone was mocking him, now, taunting with its lilting melody, teasing with its too-sweet song. If Lucius knew, he would laugh. Severus himself could not see clear to explaining himself and all that he desired so deeply to anyone, without causing their laughter.
No, his mind told him, no, that isn't true. You could tell Remus. Remus would understand.
The next thought came as a shock to him, a sucker-punch to the stomach, sudden and unexpected and completely unprecedented. So you're jealous of Sirius Black, then? The voice in his head was just as much of a mockery of himself as Lucius's voice was. Severus felt a little dizzy as his head reeled with disbelief, the stunning moment of clarity that would no doubt disappear the moment he opened his mouth to speak.
"I'm not jealous of anyone." Those words served only as a blow to Lucius's pride. Again, his pale brow knit together as a frown pulled at his lips. His eyes focused darkly on Severus's sallow face, trying to search out the lie, as Severus felt the moment of understanding slip through his fingers as would the liquid laughter of water. The more he tightened his grasp, the more each trickle slid through his fingers, lost for the moment, and who knew how long it would be before he could gather them up again. Resentment filled him once more, and he fought to keep it at bay, tried not to hate the beautiful face before him despite how badly he wished to tear the smooth skin to shreds.
"And why shouldn't you be?" Lucius tilted his head to the side, his voice low and dangerous. There was something in Severus that told him he had nothing to fear, for all Lucius could say to him would be nothing he hadn't already used to punish himself. Every one of Lucius's words, each of his stinging attacks upon Severus's battered pride, should have no affect upon the supposedly weaker boy, for all that he had told himself such things time and time again. "After all, Severus -- what is there that you don't have cause to envy?" Lucius ran his fingers over the binding of Severus's Potions history book with the caress of a reptile before it opened its mouth wide and thus swallowed you whole, or wrapped its verdant body about you and crushed the breath from your lungs in the tightest of embraces. Possessive, almost, crazed by its desire for possession and poisoned by its search for power.
"All right." Severus admitted defeat in the argument but gave up no spoils. It was easy enough to let Lucius be the victor but if the victory was without any gain, perhaps the blond would have no choice but to let Severus alone. "I'm jealous." He could take minor pride in knowing that Lucius would never know of whom. He could build himself up on the knowledge that Lucius would assume it was himself -- and would puff up like a blowfish with such false security. Yes, there were times when all Severus wanted was to be the sole captor of all of Lucius's precious attention. But there were time like these, where resentment boiled into disgust within him, and he could not coat sweetly over it, for all his admiration and awe of the blond boy's strength. "But who isn't jealous of something?"
The words sprang almost unbidden to his lips, but once they passed, Severus could not help but feel a surge of power equal to his surge of revulsion burn within him. It was a parting shot, one that would hit home, exactly as intended.
Although, he hadn't exactly intended it. The words had come out on instinct, or perhaps just impulse. Lucius was silent, eyes blazing with fire cold enough to burn, until he turned his gaze away, hands stilled on the binding of the heavy book in Severus's lap. Severus's heart pounded nervously, despite the power lent him by his sense of justice fed pride. At last, Lucius dropped his hand against Severus's thigh rather than the dusty book cover, looking towards him with a mixture of true respect along with sly amusement.
"You're quite full of surprises, after all," Lucius murmured, his voice irresistible as honey. "Lord Voldemort is right to seek your loyalty as avidly as he once sought mine." Severus's body grew cold as a statue, immobile as stone. To be wanted was one thing, one wonderfully desirable thing. To be wanted by one who was overpoweringly disagreeable, so much as to be beyond terrifying, was quite another thing entirely. All strength drained from Severus's limbs and he was left shocked, stunned, as Lucius closed his lips over Severus's earlobe and bit down upon the soft flesh. Whether it was to chastise or to mark his property, Severus could not discern, nor did he particularly want to. "I'll be hard pressed," Lucius went on, his breath hot against Severus's ear, "to share you with him, though I suppose I shall have to allow it, and learn I cannot always have everything I want."
A little thrill that seemed eerily like a shiver rocked down Severus's spine. It was the first time during the vacation that Lucius had touched him, and there was little doubt as to what was happening as Lucius tightened his fingers in a serpentine grasp around the ventricles of Severus's heart, and refused to ever have them loosen.
Despite all that had passed over the Christmas Break, nothing was significantly changed between Sirius and Remus when they returned from Rhondda and fell back into their usual routines: schoolwork, moments of fleeting but memorable privacy, schoolwork again, meals, privacy, and sleep. The only noticeable difference in their intimacy was that they had begun to share the same bad, Remus finding Sirius a comforting presence in the night, Sirius discovering that he simply couldn't sleep without Remus lying beside him. It was an unspoken arrangement, and after all the lights were out and the other Gryffindor boys had fallen asleep, either Sirius or Remus would slip out of bed and pad quietly over to the other, parting the curtains and entering without a word. Most often it was Sirius who would come to Remus's side, impatient and unwilling to wait for more than a few minutes before he made his way across the room and right back to that most comfortable place, with Remus caught up in his arms.
He never told the smaller boy about what his brothers had said, and was careful to make sure James knew never to speak of what he knew to his parents, on the chance that it might accidentally be passed on to Orion or, worse, Michael and Sean. It was easy enough to keep this a secret from the rest of his family, for he was not lying to them, merely obscuring, or shadowing, a piece of the truth. Yes, Remus was his best friend and yes, they spent a good deal of time together.
Sirius just never chose to tell his family exactly what it was they were doing, in that time. But he never once had to lie, and that was what kept it easy. Sometimes, when he found he could not sleep, and his mind was hazy with warmth in his bed with Remus in his arms, he would feel a stab, or a clutch, of deeply rooted guilt, admitting as he lowered his defenses towards sleep the misery he felt at such a betrayal, both on his brothers' part, and on his own. Never once had he imagined such prejudice, though as he thought about it later, he knew he should have realized. After all, it wasn't exactly common, at least not in his town, and he knew now from experience that what was not common was most often looked upon with fear, uncertainty, and disgust.
Of all his friends Sirius told only James what he had overheard by the fireside that night, and his friend listened in solemn silence to the whole story before he shook his head and bowed it.
"That's the way a lot of people are," he said, and then there was a long silence, in which he fought some internal struggle. Sirius watched him and knew then more than ever which one of them was the hero, which one of them was the greater spirit, which one of them deserved everything the vast world had to give. It made him feel more proud, this time, than jealous, and he wondered if perhaps he might be growing up just a little. At last, James spoke again. "I'm sorry, Sirius." Nothing else was said. For a long time after, Sirius was left to wonder what James had meant by those three soft, curt words. For a long time after, he failed to understand it.
Other than the words of Sirius's brothers there was nothing to haunt him, and the short winter days passed quickly with the heavy snow. Remus went to the willow for the nights of the full moon and Sirius would stay awake all night, worried, pained, pacing the floor of the Gryffindor Common Room with his jaw clenched tight. In the morning, he would be in the Infirmary before Madam Pomfrey could arrive, waiting for Remus's return. There were certain routines they fell into, simple and reliable, so that Remus always knew he would wake to a pain tempered and finally diluted by Sirius's presence. It was comfortable and pleasant, to have the wounds the wolf inflicted soothed away by Sirius's fumbling but gentle words and guarding, protective company. While it did not make such nights bearable it did water down the despair a little, so that the sunrise was something to look forward to, even in the dead of bloody night.
A change Remus did note was one in Sewerus Snape, for after break was over they were paired to work together in Potions by Professor Hemlock, who obviously hoped that some of Severus's natural talent for the class could be imparted to the yet-reluctant Remus. While the dark-haired Slytherin had for a long time been withdrawn, the difference in him now was that it was almost impossible to reach him, his eyes dark and turned somewhere inside, his face caught up in a projection of some inner turmoil that flickered away once Remus tried to focus on it. Severus's face was like a mask, and Remus found it above all else intriguing, deep corners of his mind recognizing the looks from his own features, and finding himself more than just curious about what they represented. Their own friendship had been changed, for Severus had grown quieter, as if he were tiptoeing along the edge of a terrible chasm, into which he could at any moment fall, and he said little to nothing at all, even during their study sessions in the library, and Remus assumed at first that it had to do somehow with the inevitably powerful Lucius Malfoy. Once he saw the two interact, unnoticed, in the hallway, he did not merely assume, but rather, he knew. The amused stance of Lucius's body, the subservient one of Severus's. Like two wolves, Remus concluded, a weaker one who gave up all his kills and his pride to feed the ego of the more dominant pack leader. Seeing such things made Remus feel a little sick, and it put him for the first time in his life towards the objective of drawing conversation out of someone else, rather than having someone else draw the conversation out of him.
"You're not paying attention," Severus said one night during yet another furtive meeting, in which they were going over the failure of Remus's latest potions project. "If you're careless, it isn't going to work." It was the first time Severus had spoken, other than to give directions, the entire night. Remus looked up, eyes caught in the candlelight, serious and apologetic, gold lacing the brown.
"I'm trying," he promised, "honestly. There's something about Potions that I" He trailed off. Severus had that look on his face, only this time, his eyes were on Remus, as if he was half watching, half lost in thought. Remus coughed. "Severus?" The Slytherin boy blinked, and then shook his head a little.
"Sorry," he apologized, "I suppose I'm not paying attention, either." Remus let silence fall as he desperately scraped around for something fitting to say, feeling wild and helpless.
"Perhaps," he attempted, "we're both tired?" It would have been easy, Severus realized, to take that as an excuse to end their studying and return to his own bed, where things would not be so awkward, and his mind would not be so confused. But then, there was always the possibility that Lucius had waited up for him. And he never knew, lately, whether he should enjoy the blond's company, or dread it.
"Perhaps," Severus replied carefully, "but there's only a little while longer to go. We can get through it, don't you think?" Remus rubbed the bridge of his nose and turned back to his notes. Once, they would have made perfect sense to him, and he wouldn't have to be up two hours later than necessary, going over and over the ingredients for the potion he'd ruined.
Again.
"I think so," he agreed, flashing a half-smile and puffing out a weak little sigh. "After all, there isn't any other time to do it over, except for tomorrow night, and by then I'll have ruined tomorrow's potion, so we'll only have double the work to do then. No, we might as well work it out now and get it over with."
"You're not that bad," Severus protested, his dark eyes truthful, "really. You have the potential, it's just that" He looked away, and then turned back to him, lips in a tight but wry line, "I think you really don't want to do it. You used to be one of the best in the class, but ever since" He didn't finish his sentence. Remus's hands fell still in his lap, his entire body rigid. "Sorry," Severus said, for the second time that conversation, "I didn't mean to bring him up."
"It's all right," Remus said quickly, knowing the last thing Severus needed at the moment was another reason to apologize. "You're right. You're - you're completely right. You don't have to apologize."
"Mm," Severus said, nodding, "I thought so. If you just put your heart to it, as opposed to your mind, then we wouldn't have any trouble at all."
"Now," Remus replied, "I suppose it's my turn to apologize? For causing you all this extra work, that is," he continued, shrugging weakly. "I'm just - I can't. I try to - really. But - I can't."
"There's not much you can't do," Severus murmured, "so, I suppose, I should feel proud that the one area in which you fall very close to failing is one in which I happen to excel." He attempted a smile. It was wider than most of Remus's, but that wasn't saying much.
"And I should be grateful." Remus ran his fingers nervously through his hair. "That I have the best student in the class as my partner. Professor Hemlock must have thought that your skills would cancel out my clumsiness, and instead of blowing the classroom into the sky, we'd merely do a mediocre job of things." Autumn-gold strands caught the flickering of the candlelight and shimmered, more pure than the pale color of Lucius's own locks. Severus turned his eyes away.
"We'll work it out," he said noncommittally. "You're not that bad, and I'm not that good."
"That quite an understatement," Remus murmured in return, feeling the attention on the conversation slipping, feeling Severus fade away into that other world. That must be just how I was, Remus thought to himself, then amended it, just how I am. He winced.
"Perhaps we should give up, for now," Severus said suddenly, softly, "I'm not sure either of us are paying adequate attention, and if you're tired- "
"No," Remus said, "I'm not. But if you are--"
"No," Severus cut in, "I--"
"Oh," Remus said. They met each other's eyes, and a few moments of choppy silence passed. Then, quite suddenly, there was the glimmer of a sparkle to be seen in the depths of Severus's dark, unreadable eyes, an equal spark catching fire in Remus's own. They kept that gaze locked together and, as if on simultaneous cue, they both began to laugh, both sounds rusty and unused but equally relieved. Remus felt all the tension in him fade away until he was almost as relaxed as he was with Sirius by his side, just Sirius and only Sirius, and Severus felt more comfortable and calm than he had ever before in his life. The laughter did not die out, but swelled for a moment longer, like the sweeping curve of a wave, until finally in ebbed and faded upon their lips. Severus rubbed his own cheek absently, feeling the smile still tugging upon the muscles of his jaw and chin. He had not laughed in what felt like years, and found he was speechless to it, watching Remus's face thoughtfully, with as much pleasure as he took from reading each line of poetry in one of his favorite books. Remus, too, could not speak, but for a different reason. He had used up enough strength in talking as much as he had and laughing as long as he did to leave him without any courage left to part his lips and let the words come. And there was the fondest look upon Severus's softened face that Remus failed to understand, and he was intent upon discovering what it meant.
In this pleasant confusion, where everything was sated as the belly of a full, old dog, where everything was all caught up in that look on Severus's face, and the air still echoed tangibly to the sound of their previous laughter, the door to the library was opened and shut, but they did not hear it. Severus had leaned forward a little, head tilted to the side, studying something. There were footsteps on the ground, and Remus could scent something familiar on the air. Suddenly familiar, too familiar, heightened senses understanding but his body somehow not reacting.
It was only when Sirius coughed loudly that Remus found he could turn his head, his eyes and his expression blank, his body tensed and unsure. There had been something about that look in Severus's eyes that suggested something, even to Remus, though he did not know what it was. They had just been studying, working over an extra assignment upon the failure of their last one.
But there was also something about the look in Sirius's eyes that suggested he didn't think so. That look was what clicked in Remus's senses, which knew Sirius and Sirius's emotions better than he knew his own, and Remus knew something was very wrong. It was a hurt in the cobalt blue that ached, an accusation that stung, a fear that was strong enough and terrible enough to cut through steel and crumble mountains beneath its force. An avalanche of betrayal, soundless but screeching upon the air's lack of sound.
For a while, no one breathed.
"So," Sirius said finally, his voice kept cold and clipped, "James told me you'd be studying here. But he seemed to be misinformed in thinking you'd be alone."
That night was the first time since Christmas Break that Remus and Sirius slept in separate beds. It was impossible for one to find rest without the other, but Sirius's wounded pride and Remus's inability to completely uncover what it was that had wounded said pride kept each from making the first move. They hadn't talked as they returned to Gryffindor common room, hadn't exchanged glances or even 'good night's as they slipped into their respective beds, and once they had each gotten under the covers they lay awake, wondering and insecure as their minds wandered towards the unsafe territory of possibility.
He had been laughing, Sirius thought to himself, laughing with Severus Snape, of all people!
It had always taken everything Sirius had in him just to make Remus smile, but there he was, laughing with Severus as if he didn't have a single care in the world, his eyes sparkling with that wonderful, delighted sparkle that Sirius longed so badly to inspire. He'd only done it once or twice and it galled him impossibly to see that of all people, Severus Snape, disliked for obvious reasons, antisocial and impossible and all around awful, was laughing, with Remus. With Sirius's Remus.
When, Sirius wondered, had he started thinking of Remus as his own? It only made sense, after all. And he would have thought would have loved it if Remus thought of him the same way. All that Sirius had, he would gladly give to Remus in a heartbeat. And he had tried so hard and for so long to make him laugh with that same ease he had shown just an hour ago in the library.
Sirius's anger came, he knew immediately, from hurt. But he couldn't say anything, for it words it seemed so simple, so petty, so childish. It would
be pointless to explain it to Remus, who would blink his golden eyes and shake his tousled head and explain it all away so easily and with such charm that Sirius would inevitably forget why it was he'd been so hurt in the first place. But this, no matter how much he wanted it to be, wasn't something he could just forget. Something needed to be done about it. Something needed to be done to keep Remus from laughing like that with Severus, ever again.
Sirius just didn't know what.
But, he realized, he had the rest of the night left to him to figure it out. He'd come up with complicated plans with James before, had thought of some of the best pranks in Hogwarts history. So this should be no problem. All he had to do was get the greasy Slytherin boy away from Remus, for good.
Remus's bed was just as cold with the still hush of night and the chill of the ebbing winter as Sirius's was. What with memory of the previous events and the bitter cut of confusion, beneath which Remus knew everything that had happened was most definitely his fault, guilt had crawled into Remus's heart, and was making itself comfortable there, ready to spend the night even though Sirius would not.
All right, Remus had admitted, there were a lot of things he didn't understand about a lot of people. He had always known that, knew it now all too well. It was the simple reason why he didn't fit in appropriately anywhere, besides in Sirius's arms, and that was why he was suddenly so disoriented. He had, or at least he had thought he had, always understood Sirius, and therefore why he did certain things, which was why he was always so comfortable around the other boy, so at ease with both their actions and motives. Therefore, the agonizing silence he was receiving was for the most part unexplained, and for all that he was lacking all the necessary information for simple understanding, Remus didn't know what to do, or how to go about fixing the mess he had made. Remus had to figure out something that was obviously more than a simple betrayal Sirius felt over childhood rivalries, as well as the deeply engrained competition between Slytherin and Gryffindor that Sirius loved to cultivate. No, there wouldn't have been that bruised look in Sirius's eyes, nor that wounded expression he might have worn had Remus actually, physically stabbed him in the back, if the betrayal he felt had been something so simple as that. There wouldn't have been such pain, there wouldn't have been such accusation.
Just remembering that look in Sirius's eyes when they turned on him made Remus's gut clench. He remembered suddenly with the faint, green tinge of sickness the big dinner he had had, followed by the even bigger desert of chocolate mud cake afterwards. The cake had seemed at the time to be a confectioner's heaven, but it was now threatening to leave his stomach in a sudden, twisting onslaught of remorseful nausea. He closed his eyes tight, pressed his fingertips against his palms, and tried to keep his breathing steady. Beneath that, he felt the deep desire to listen in the silence of the room, to hear if he could catch the sounds of Sirius's rhythmic breath upon the air. Perhaps, that rhythm would give him some clue as to what it was he had done so injuriously, and why it was this was such an emotional blow to Sirius's expectations.
I'm sorry, he thought miserably as he clutched his pillow tightly against him, but I don't know how to make it right.
And that was the source and the culmination of his misery: his utter inability to rectify the situation, and the overwhelming helplessness he suddenly felt in the face of losing Sirius Black.
Severus had been expecting a confrontation from Sirius Black for four days before it came, so that his time of preparedness had ended and it took him completely by surprise, despite how ready for it he had been in the beginning.
"Snape." The realization of what that clipped voice was calling him to settled over Severus's chest like a shroud, his body feeling icy, as a tomb might. It would have been outstandingly pathetic, however, to let the shiver than ran through him at the sound of that voice show, so instead he steeled himself to whatever blows would come, adopting the dignity he was only just now beginning to develop. He felt it smooth over him, a sweet, cool calm that was sort of like a poker face, if you thought about it metaphorically, revealing no cards he might potentially have had up his sleeve.
"Black." His voice, too, was commendable, and he let the little trickle of confidence that dripped into his veins turn into a tidal wave, something strong enough to carry him through. "What is it?" Granted, he despised the way he sounded, self-satisfied, self-promoting. But it was the only way he could get through this with his spirit in tact. Some things, he had learned, needed to be forfeited for other, larger purposes.
"Thought you might like to talk a little. That's all." Sirius's tones, which were always suffused with some sort of fiery rage, was the exact opposite of Severus's own. They were human, so painfully real, and it was hard not to admire or even covet their bravery, their outspoken strength. "Just some things I thought maybe, you might like to talk about." Severus held his ground, though his curiosity had been sparked aflame.
"I don't know what we could possibly have to discuss," he replied guardedly, finally looking up at Sirius's face, the boy being a good inch or so taller than he. He looked tired, as if he hadn't been getting much sleep, but still, he seemed a force to be reckoned with, proud and strong and above all, utterly determined.
"A damn lot of things, I should think," Sirius retorted hotly, clamping a hand down on Severus's shoulder, "and here'n'now's a better time than any, 'cause it's here'n'now." The rest of the students had filed out of the classroom and even Professor McGonagall was nowhere to be seen, so that there was no getting out of it, no way to go but headfirst. Severus swallowed, hoping he didn't look as nervous as he felt.
"All right," he said casually, setting his bag down on a desk and leaning against it in what he decided finally was a nonchalant pose, "if you have something to say, I can't keep you from saying it, after all." Sirius snorted softly, suddenly not able to meet his eyes, his hands clenching and unclenching into fists. It seemed to Severus that he was chased, plagued by some inner torment, which had dogged at his heels for a while, now. No doubt it had been there ever since that night more than half a week before, in the library. Severus tried not to feel smug. Rather, he tried only to look it.
"Just," Sirius said, his knuckles white, "thought there were some things you should know. 'Bout Remus. Before you go getting really friendly, just thought there were some important things." Severus gave him nothing, only silence. Sirius swallowed, breathed deeply, and went on. "When he's gone every month. You can't really - be his friend, you know, can't get close, unless you know where." The whites of Sirius's eyes were also very white, the blue equally very blue. He was a vivid sort of person, filled with deep colors and passion just as deep.
"It's not any of my business," Severus replied, but he knew by the look in Sirius's eyes that it was, and he knew by the pounding of his own heart that he had to know.
"It's very much your business," Sirius said, his voice low and resigned. He had set himself towards whatever goal it was he had been considering, knowing that there was no other way, knowing that there would be great sacrifices and hoping the result would be worth it. "It's very much your business," he repeated, "but I don't think it's my place to tell you. I think it's your place - to see for yourself." Severus watched the resolute face, gray and pale beneath its tan. A long silence passed, and Severus was forced to break it.
"Oh?" he asked. He sounded, he realized, very week, but there was nothing he could do about it now. Sirius turned back to him, eyes trapped as a wild beast's.
"Tomorrow night," Sirius said, "it's the full moon." His eyes flickered towards the window nervously, then pulled back to focus once more on Severus's face, intent and forceful. There was no looking away from those eyes. "Go down to the Whomping Willow after supper and tap the knot at the base of the tree with anything long you can find. A pole. A branch. Anything." Sirius licked his lips. In the depths of him, where his thoughts were not blinded by the despair of his heart, he knew what he was doing was, to be completely frank, wrong. But he couldn't stop now. He had made up his mind. There was nowhere else to go but forward, and it would only pain him further to start looking back. "You only have to follow the tunnel," he finished, tossing his hair over one shoulder as if he hadn't a care in the world, "that's all. You'll see." He didn't wait for Severus to respond, but turned instead to go, his back to Severus, a blind eye turned to what he had just done.
There was nothing to it, he assured himself, but to go forward.
Severus was left alone in the room, silent, unsure. Tomorrow night, he told himself, a full moon. The Whomping Willow. For a moment, he debated, wondered whether or not he was going to go. It could be a trap; it could have been Sirius setting some sort of prank into motion for his idea of justified 'revenge' when Severus hadn't even done anything. He didn't wonder for long. Prank or no, the way his heart was beating, the way every wondering thought that had ever passed through his mind over Remus Lupin, only pointed towards one direction, the only direction, he could take.
Tomorrow night, at the Whomping Willow.
Severus gathered up his bag and his books and went on his way, and there was no sign of Sirius in the empty halls, his only accompaniment the struggling of his heart against his ribcage.
"I did something stupid," Sirius whispered, his face drawn and pale. Outside, the sun was setting, and Sirius knew what it would give way to. The all seeing eye of the full moon, gazing down from the velveteen sky, would rise to reign over all that lay beneath it in a matter of minutes. Remus had been absent all day, and Sirius found himself watching the spaces where he was not, missing, hoping, and allowing guilt to finally take its toll upon him.
"Well," James snorted softly, not looking up from his homework, "so what's new?" Lilly laughed softly, hiding the sound behind her hand, as she leaned over James's shoulder to read a few lines from the book he had commandeered.
"No," Sirius said, "I did something really stupid." There must have been something in the tone of his voice, hushed and almost tremulous, weak at the onslaught of his own heavy conscience, that made the other three look up all at once. As if his words pleaded with them, begged them to take him seriously. The moment James saw his drawn face he knew something was wrong; Sirius had been quiet all day but he had assumed it was Remus's absence that had caused his other friend to withdraw. Now, he saw it was something worse, something that could only be described as truly great. James's eyes narrowed.
"Sirius?" he asked cautiously. "What did you do?"
Severus stepped out into the darkness, cloak wrapped tight around him. Before him stretched the night, grass cool beneath him, wind cool around him, the darkness sweet but the tinge of the unknown that waited for him filled him with apprehension, and he held his breath in bated fear. Everything was a shadow; he was a shadow; the trees were many shadows; everything a shadow that cast another shadow, and another, and another, until it faded into blackness, and the world succumbed to the dark.
He secured his cloak around his neck, shaking his shoulders, and brace himself against the shiver of night as it ran down the center of his back.
"You what?" The words were loud, demanding, as only Lilly Evans could make them, piercing right into Sirius's brain. Sirius winced.
"You heard me," he muttered softly, scuffing his foot on the floor, unable to meet anyone's eyes, though he felt all other eyes focused, burning, upon him. It was hard not to wince again, hard not to try and find a crack in the floor to fall through. He waited, for only a moment more, for all hell to break loose.
"You're actually not joking?!" James's voice was incredulous, raised to a level just slightly under a shout. He was shocked, too shocked so far to feel anything yet, but he knew whatever it was he should be feeling had a lot to do with anger, and so he opted for reprimand to start with. Later on, he'd simply have to kill him. "You actually told Severus Snape, of all people, to-- to-- to--!" He found he was shaking too hard with disbelief and sudden, protective rage to say anything else, and merely stood there, book overturned on the floor beside him, with his face white and his pupils dilated.
"No!" Sirius yelled back, half-heartedly trying to go on the offensive, for defense was a position in which he despised being put, "why would I joke about something like that?"
"I don't know!" James returned, eyes flashing as he refused to let Sirius gain the upper hand, "why the hell would you be serious about it?" Lilly, moving behind James, nodded once, firmly, her emerald eyes just as accusatory and demanding as James's were, only scarier, because she was a girl.
"You don't understand," Sirius said miserably, forced to back down again, "it's just-- I--"
"So help us, Sirius," James interrupted coldly, "help us to understand why you of all people would -- could! -- betray Remus, this way." Outside the had disappeared over the low edge of the horizon, its fire gone from the once sizzling air.
Lying a few feet out of the Whomping Willow's range was a long, gnarled branch, just perfect for Severus's intentions. He hesitated, looking all around him, and then lifted it, putting his weight behind it, and then searching out the knot of which Sirius had spoken. There was the strangest feeling in the air as he hit it, and the thrashing boughs of the great willow tree stilled, frozen, as if submerged in ice.
Severus dropped the branch hastily, and made for the passageway, darker black on black, a deeper secret on this night full of mysteries.
"They were there," Sirius said helplessly, "together, in the library. Laughing! Do you know how hard you have to try to make Remus laugh -- how hard I have to try to make him laugh? He never even -- never even smiles, usually, unless I -- and it wasn't the same! It was like, like they both understood each other, in a way no one else could! I didn't even know they were there and they were laughing, he was smiling so bright, I didn't know what to do but -- but to" Sirius trailed off. Again, all eyes were on him, making him feel, no doubt deservedly so, as if he were two feet tall. He closed his eyes, his throat feeling dry, his hands at once sweaty and freezing cold. A little shiver ran through him, and he thought somewhere on the wind outside he could hear a hoot-owl shriek. "Well," he went on suddenly, crying out sharply enough to make the other three jump, "I didn't know what else to do! I can't lose him, not to that bloody Snape, not to anyone!" There was again silence, heavy enough to drown you. Sirius felt trapped, wronged by his own actions, helpless to do anything at all to fix the mess he'd made. He choked back a cry of anguish and fought to stay calm.
"You know what you've done." James broke the silence first, his voice collected, more thoughtful than outraged, more dismayed than accusing. "You've given practically given his secret away, to a Slytherin, no less. Sirius, oh, God, Sirius -- why couldn't you have just thrown a couple of punches and then have been done with it? Why this?"
"A couple of punches wouldn't have worked," Sirius said dully, the life drained out of his eyes, "it wouldn't have done it. It's -- you know Snape," Sirius went on, desperate, "he wouldn't stick around Remus if he saw -- if he knew that"
"That what?" Lilly's voice was colder than James's, almost scornful, though Sirius thought he could detect the bitter hint of pity in it, as well. "That Remus is a 'freak of nature' or something like that? That he isn't normal? Is that what you wanted -- to give Severus Snape, of all people, the knowledge to make Remus's life miserable and keep him from--"
"Lilly," James interrupted, and touched her forearm. She fell silent, caught by something in his eyes. The light, somber blue were filled with adulthood, with pain, and turned inwards upon himself, searching. "Oh," James said suddenly, "oh God, what if--"
"What?" It was the first time Peter had spoken during the entire exchange. Where he had been silent, keeping to his own corner, watching every emotion play itself out as in a theater production, now he was standing, sandy blond hair obscuring his pale eyes, keeping his purpose and intent shadowy, unclear. "What if what?"
"Severus," James whispered, the blood draining from his face, "what if -- Remus is a werewolf, and Severus doesn't know -- he's walking in there blind, Remus could--"
"Kill him," Peter finished off gravely. For the first time the realization of such a repercussion found its way first into Sirius's mind, then into his gut. He was struck sightless, all sounds fading from the room, a blur passing before his eyes and filling his mind so that only Peter's words registered in his senses. Not one life, but two, could be ruined in the Shrieking Shack that night. Silence settled thickly over the room once more, strong enough to suffocate, filled with foreboding threat.
"Oh God," Sirius said finally, his voice choked, sounding distant and far away, "what have I done?"
It was a long, dark passage, dark as Severus's thoughts, and the earth around him was moist, smelling as sweet as the air had, before. It was, despite his natural, human instincts, and the nervousness of his pounding heart, something that would have been under other circumstances quite pleasant. He felt roots catch at his hair, tug at his robes, and kept his eyes fixed before him, waiting for that pinprick of light he knew must always come at the end of any tunnel, no matter how long, no matter how dark, no matter how tight. Dirt crept under his fingernails and one single bead of sweat ran down his forehead, blurring the vision of his left eye.
He kept on. Once you had gone for at least a minute into a tunnel, there was to be no turning back. It was now just a matter of when he would first catch sight of the light ahead.
"You know bloody well what you've done," Lilly shot at him, words meant as weapons, finding their mark easily all throughout Sirius's guilt-weakened sensitivity. He cringed, wishing he could curl up, wishing for the first time in his life to know any sort of spell that would work towards invisibility. "You'd just best hope there's a way to fix it, if there's a way to fix it--"
"How can we fix it?" Peter's voice was flat, point-blank, devastatingly honest. "There's no way to fix it. There's nothing to fix. It's too late now." He turned towards the window, words echoing like the tolling of a death bell. "See? The moon's full. Night's already fallen." Nothing could be said to that. All four of them stared towards the window and were silent, breathless, hearts beating too fast and too wildly, a caged butterfly, a creature trapped behind bars. Insecurity filled the room. There was, as Peter had said, nothing to be done, nothing to be said, no way to make this right. Too much damage had already been caused. It was already too late, too late before they had even tried.
It was a defeat James Potter refused to accept.
"All right," he said, "I'm going." And before anyone could stop him he had pushed passed Sirius's immobile, stunned form, and had gone out the doorway with a swish of robes and a slamming of wood against wood. The fire in the Common Room's hearth flickered with the gust of a sudden wind that came from the throwing open and slamming shut of the door.
"You'd best hope," Lilly said, her voice dark and unrelenting, "that James can do something about this. You'd best hope," she repeated, and then all was silent, left to the imagination, and the looming of a barren, lonely world that lay ahead.
James had never run so fast or so hard in all his life. The chill night wind cut into his face, slicing over his cheeks, and his breath streamed out white upon the frosty air, leaving little trails of condensation behind him. Already, his palms felt cold, and all his stomach felt as if it were jumping to his throat. Something had to be done, he knew that, and he was suddenly the one to do it.
The power was overwhelming, and though he did feel it surge pleasantly through him, he felt also the heavy weight of responsibility settle over his shoulders. In time, such responsibility could drag you down, just as such power could undo you piece by piece. He didn't know whether or not he liked it, but bent his head to the wind and forced his muscles onward as his feet slapped the winter-frozen ground. It had not snowed in a while. The air felt pregnant, thick. He felt hot, as if it had suddenly become very humid all around him.
Before him, the Whomping Willow rose up as if it were some great magical creature awaiting him, a dragon perhaps, though frozen still as a statue.
Please, he prayed to no one at all, not believing such a request would make any difference, anyway, please, just give me enough time.
When at last Snape came out into the light it was faded, sunken, and it took his eyes a moment to get used to being able to see once again. The tunnel had been long and dark and the earth around him crumbly, so that he shook dirt from himself as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the weakened light around him.
Beneath him was a wooden floor, rough but speaking pleasantly of tamed things, human things. He ran his fingers through his hair, smoothing himself out, feeling rather at a loss. There were no further directions he remembered that he could follow, and it seemed to him that he was alone in this crudely made, unfurnished room, the silence more deafening than a roaring cacophony of sound. Then he heard the sound of a wolf howl, too close for comfort. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, then stood on end.
His attention was drawn to a flimsy looking staircase before him. There was nowhere to go but up, now, for he had already come this far. The howl of the wolf on the air told him as a portent might that he had come almost to the end of his journey, whatever it might be.
The first step creaked out painedly as he began to mount them.
Over the Gryffindor Common Room a tense, miserable silence had stretched itself, thick, suffocating. It seemed too hot, though the fire had gone out. Peter was, he felt, for once a part of the excitement, or the despair, or the combination of both. Sirius was still despite his overwhelmingly impatient nervousness. Lilly was scowling in all directions around herself, a glare that could have killed a fully grown horse. There was nothing to alleviate the silence besides the occasional, long breath drawn in.
And then there was the sound of a hoot owl again, weak and far away but carried full over the pregnant air, coming easily to Sirius's ears.
And then he was moving towards the door, Lilly and Peter moving after him, orchestrated by a conductor far away, moving to a music of instinct they did not understand.
"I can't take it any more," Sirius said, and the door slammed shut behind them again, echoing jarringly through the halls as they broke into a run.
It was slow going, crawling on his hands and knees, where roots snatched out at him as if to hinder his process and dirt got into his nose and sweat into his eyes and heat flooded his body. It was slow and cramped, and yet necessity forced him onwards so that there was no time to catch his breath, each one coming ragged and loud in the stifling earth. His wand was digging into his stomach, having come loose from its usual place hidden in his sleeve. Somehow, though, that discomfort proved simply to comfort him, for he knew he was not helpless, knew that once he got through the trapping womb of the tunnel he would be out into the light, where there would be something he could do.
Before him, the slightest pinprick of light. Beneath him, a stone cut shallowly along his arm. He hissed softly in pain and doubled his speed and efforts, fists clenched so tight he might have sworn his palms were bleeding.
There was a heavy feeling of foreboding in Severus's gut, clenching, twisting. But his feet were moving forward without his knowledge, without his acquiescence. There was nothing to do but go forward. Nothing to do but progress. Nothing to do but see what it was Sirius had been so intent upon him seeing.
Even though there was the oddest smell of blood and anger in the air, if anger had a smell. Anger must have a smell -- anger smelled just like this. Coppery, bruised, bitter. Hungry. Intent. Vengeful. Severus swallowed.
Halfway up the stairs, now. Halfway up, not halfway down. Halfway more to go.
He heard the wolf howl again.
The air smelled not like anger, not like blood. It smelled like a wolf's howl.
Sirius's hair was in his eyes but the night was dark enough that he couldn't see anything anyway, not the roots that tripped him, not the branches from every small, bare sapling that he crashed into, not the rocks that gouged into the soles of his sneakers and made his breath catch in pain. Above him, the moon watched in passive quiet, nothing soft or beautiful about it, a haunting, ghostly orb of gray speckled white. It was maliciously beautiful, ravishingly cruel. It was watching, and were it the sort of inevitable presence that could laugh, it would be.
Maybe, it was laughing in the twinkling of all the bright stars, blinking on and off and on and off in the blackness of the vast sky.
Don't let James be too late, he begged, but he wasn't begging the moon, he's better at this sort of hero thing than anyone. Don't let James be too late. Please.
Behind him he could hear the sound of Lilly and Peter breathing heavily, crashing into the same branches, stumbling over the same roots and rocks, feeling the same helplessness beneath the potency of the night sky. His gut ached both with how fast he was running and how terrified he was.
C'mon, James, Lilly thought, closing her eyes and plunging onward, moonlight catching in the fire-orange of her hair, c'mon. Just -- c'mon.
Peter, half a step behind her, with his legs shorter and less graceful, felt a branch slap into his forehead and barely had the presence of mind to wince. All he could see was the shimmer of Lilly's hair before him; that was all he was following.
It really is, he thought to himself, a beautiful night.
It was the light that threw James off, not the darkness. He blinked rapidly behind his glasses, eyes desperate for focus, lashes trembling with each heaving breath he took. The setting was just an empty room, floorboards rough-hewn wood. It was old, dusty in some places but well-worn in others.
And across the room was a staircase, each flat step weak, strained. From the looks of it, it had been used too recently for dust to have settled over the wood.
The top of the staircase was bathed in shadow but it was easy to see, if you were looking hard enough, the door ajar, the slice of light that pressed through the crack. It was easy to feel something in the air emanating from behind that door, coming from the room behind it, and whatever that room held. It was a something James didn't like, couldn't like, an omen of something that would happen in mere seconds.
James bounded forward, taking the steps three at a time, giving his lungs no time to recover and ignoring the protest in his limbs at the sudden motion. Beneath him the steps cried out, grinding against one another, and the soles of his feet rebelled, aching with the renewed weight pressed upon them. Something like adrenaline rushed through his body. Three steps down. Something white flashed behind his eyes, like power in his veins, unstoppable and uncontrollable and chilling. Three more steps down. Less than halfway to go. So this was what it was like to be strong. So this was what it was like to know you could do anything, anything you wanted, anything you put your mind to.
If he only wasn't too late.
The wolf was howling not two feet from Severus's frozen body, teeth bared. In the wolf's eyes was an understanding Severus recognized easily but refused to place. Severus himself was blinded, body unable to move, unable to feel.
What is it?
But it was a wolf, simple as that, russet colored fur and mud colored eyes, pearly as a wet snail shell, teeth white as the color of the moon, and just as powerful.
And the question was not what, but rather who.
Who is it?
But he found he couldn't bear to answer himself, couldn't feel enough to think, could only let shock filter over him and bind each limb to statuesque stiffness.
Under Sirius's nails chunks of dirt were dug up, tossed behind, filtering once or twice against Lily's nose. She barely had time to notice it. In front of her she could hear Sirius's heavy breathing. Behind her, it was hard to even tell if Peter was still there, save for the occasional time his fingers brushed over her ankle, and she prayed it was her friend rather than some small creature that was living in this passage made entirely of hollowed out earth.
Sirius gritted his teeth and dragged himself onward, sweat flushing over his cheeks and forehead, blinding what limited vision he had. He felt a root catch on his shirt and tear.
Small things such as that didn't seem to matter, anymore.
It all happened very fast.
Because the wolf was going to jump, coiled muscles tensing, body readying itself, eyes glinting with expectation and triumph and blood at last. Because the wolf was big though it was young, angry though it was still a child, terrifying for all its past torment.
Severus opened his mouth to say something, perhaps to cry out, perhaps so that he would not find total silence in the embrace of wolf paws, in the caress of wolf claws.
"Petrificus Totalus!" It wasn't Severus's voice that indeed cried out, but another, one he barely recognized over his terror, one that was changed with the power of the spell it wielded and the resolution it had discovered within itself. It was not the voice of a child, no, nor the voice of a fool. It was a voice to be obeyed. There was a bright flash of light, leaving Severus blinded for a moment, and when his vision had cleared the wolf was frozen in place as he had been, up on its hind legs, claws bared and spread to the air as if they might be wings for flight.
Severus's heart jumped a little in his chest, and then he felt the stone of his muscles melt into jelly. His knees buckled beneath him, and as he sank to the floor he let his eyes shut, let the first breath for a minute and a half rasp through his throat. He caught just before his eyes closed the image of James Potter, tousle haired, fiery eyed, standing between himself and the wolf, chest rising and falling rapidly, looking nothing like a child. And then his eyes squeezed tight shut and he half-collapsed out of relief, so that he missed the transition of James Potter from an adult back into a child, confused and unsure if whether he had done the right thing, or not.
Everything went wonderfully silent for a while, just Severus's pulse pounding in his own ears. A shadow passed over his closed eyelids, and he both felt and heard James kneel down beside him.
"Are you all right?" the boy asked, softly, his voice sounding more raw and more ragged than Severus felt his own would, were he to speak. There was also genuine concern in it, worry filtering through. Whatever this had been, it seemed as if James had not been a part of it until this very moment.
"I," Severus began, but a tremor ran through him, and he found he could not yet talk. James rested a hand on his shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze.
"You're all in one piece, at least," James said, and it did not seem as if he had the potential for humor at all in what might otherwise be a joking statement. They remained like that for a minute while Severus calmed, and was at last able both to speak and to open his eyes. Behind his glasses, James looked serious, drained, as in the ebb-tide of something enormous that had simply been passing through him. Severus swallowed down the thick fear that had lodged itself in his throat, let out a shuddering breath, and spoke.
"What is that?" he asked, shuddering. James looked shamefaced, saddened, by the question.
"I think you know," he murmured, pulling back and standing. There was a streak of blood on his arm and one of dirt across his face, and it was clear to see he had been through a good deal, trying to get to this place in time. Severus wondered if his legs had regained strength enough for him to be able to stand.
"I," Severus tried again, and then he bowed his head. It was a beast, a monster, if one wanted to put it that way, terrifying and mindless, capable of remorseless murder and destruction. It was Remus, quiet, soft-spoken, intelligent; sweet, if you let him be, if you got him unguarded enough; pained, obviously, just as secretive as Severus himself was, so that it was clear he was hiding something. But not this. Severus had never expected this.
"We need to get out of here," James said softly, "so that I can take the spell off." Severus nodded, scrambling to his feet without second request and dashing for the door, disappearing out of sight behind it. James took a last look at the frozen creature, just as trapped as it have ever been, and the sightless understanding in its eyes. In the morning, Remus would know. He took a step towards it, and then bowed his head. "I'm sorry," he murmured, "I can't make everything right. I want to. But I can't -- not everything. Not" He didn't finish the sentence. He was only talking to himself, anyway. A moment later he had followed Severus out the door, and once it was shut securely behind him he ended the spell. From within the room, they could hear a howl, long and low, follow a snarl of surprise, and then the thick thud of a furred body smashing itself against the creaking but unbreakable wood.
James and Severus met Sirius, Lilly and Peter when they got to the bottom of the creaking staircase. Sirius looked the worst of them all, if only for the panicked uncertainty in his deep blue eyes, but once he saw Severus that looked faded, to be replaced only with the shadow of despair at his own foolishness. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then thought the better of it and kept himself quiet, pressing his lips tightly together to signal that he would remain quiet. James nodded curtly to him, a look that said they'd be talking later. Again, Sirius winced like a scolded dog, but bowed his head to it in acquiescence.
Lilly herself moved immediately to James's side, blind to Peter's eyes as they followed her, and looked up at the dark-haired boy's blue eyes, the pupils dilated, the color darker, more murky, than before. Still, she said nothing, just looking at him, touching his arm, to let him know she was there. He leaned against her gratefully.
"Let's just -- let's just all go," James said at last, breaking the stagnant silence that angled sharply between the five of them. With James leading and Sirius going last, they started back down into the darkness of the tunnel, all of them suddenly weary and more tired than they ever had been, muscles remembering the panic of just moments before, hearts remembering the anguish.
Sirius cast a last look over his shoulder towards the staircase, carelessly made and put together, and the shut door above it. For a moment, he wondered if he should go up there, should do something to appease the broken spirit he had unwittingly crushed with his carelessness, with the stupidity of his own passion.
"Yeah," he murmured softly, under his breath, as he turned again to go, "I guess I could say I'm sorry, but that's not good enough." It was the finality of his own acceptance, the knowledge that nothing he did now, short of a miracle, short of turning back the wheels of time, would be good enough to fix things as they were now. No apology could do the trick, no kiss, no touch, no words were strong enough to combat the enormity of his failure. Remus would not forgive him, for how could he? Knowing this, Sirius knew too that above all, he did not deserve forgiveness. That maybe, this was the end of what had only been the beginning.
He squared his shoulders, and slipped down into the tunnel, where the friendly darkness waited to envelop him with lonely arms.
When Remus awoke there was silence throughout the infirmary, which meant he could not hear the familiar rhythm of Sirius breathing, which meant that Sirius was not waiting there, for him. For a moment, his sense of routine was thrown, and he wondered why Sirius was not yet beside him, where it seemed quite clear that he belonged. And then, without even having to reach for it, he remembered.
The night before came easily to him, easily perhaps because once he began to recall each new detail, he did not want to. Life seemed to work in patterns of irony, just like that. He shuddered, remembering Severus, remembering how wonderful he had felt it would have been to tear out his throat and his belly and taste at last the sweetness of someone else's blood. Soon after he remembered James, the binding spell, the way his muscles froze but his eyes could see all. The hesitation in James step as he moved closer, and then hurried out, was most fresh in his mind, for it was the first thing he recalled, and the last thing he returned to dwell upon.
For a while longer it did not make coherent sense to him, the events and why they had happened as they did, and so Remus lay in bed with his eyes fixed on the ceiling above as he tried to piece things together. He did not blink save for when his vision got so blurry and his eyes began to blur so badly that he was forced to do so, if only to keep from going blind. At last, when all reason left him, when all he knew to be true had been proven it could not, simply for the presence of each concrete fact, Remus was forced to believe that one of his friends must have told Severus where Remus could be found. And the only someone who knew exactly how to freeze the willow to get to the passage was Sirius.
Remus's mind froze and refused to grip such a conclusion for an hour or so. The sunlight in the infirmary grew brighter, more cheerful, in direct contrast to the sinking ache that was growing heavily in Remus's belly. For a long while, Remus just lay there, the long minutes passing.
When he at last left the infirmary, he had resolved himself, had therefore convinced himself, had moments later resigned himself, to living as it would be now. Remus had trusted Sirius with his life, with every secret he held, with the confusion of his hesitant body and the very beginnings of what might have been love. And Sirius had told Severus. There could be no more trust, and where there was no trust, Remus concluded, there was also no friendship.
It was late afternoon when Remus returned to the boy's half of the Gryffindor bedroom, bandages wrapped tight around his wrists and palms, joints and flesh aching. As a result of the previous night's denial of feral satisfaction he had torn into himself, and was lucky that he could not feel the extent of the pain in his body, since his heart had grown so numb.
They were waiting for him; James and Sirius on the edges of their seats, and Peter in the background, watching half-curiously more than anything else. For a moment. Remus wondered at the somersaulting of his heart, and questioned his resolve to keep from looking at any one of them. Somehow, his eyes remained on his bed, where his bookbag was resting, underneath that and the previous days' assignments. He picked one sheet of parchment up and skimmed his eyes over it, silent, still refusing to acknowledge the presence of the other three.
The silence was agony itself, eating away at Remus's stomach, poisoning everything within his chest. It lasted for what seemed to be years but was no doubt in actuality only a handful of unimportant minutes, until Sirius's patience broke and he found he could force himself to stand the silence no longer.
"I can't apologize," Sirius said at last, something harsh and a little ragged in his choked voice, "I can't, and we both know it, huh. 'Cause you can't even -- you can't even look at me." It was then that he stood and the bedsprings creaked and he moved as quickly as he could out of the room, to who knew where. Remus didn't look up, didn't pause in reading over the assignment.
"Suppose I didn't come fast enough," James said, lifting his eyes to the ceiling, squinting to keep something out of them, or perhaps to keep something in, "and I'm -- I'm sorry for that, Remus." A moment later, he was gone, no doubt following Sirius to wherever it was he had chosen to run off. Taking a deep breath, Remus steeled himself against the urge to care. Betrayal, thick and terrible, had taken root inside of him, not loud but refusing to be ignored, so that it had become too strong to push aside, too strong to do anything but harbor it as a friend inside the shelter of his own heart.
Peter was still there, watching, but it had always been easy to pretend he wasn't there, for he always liked to pretend it, too. Maybe it was that he wanted to watch, or maybe it was something else entirely. Remus had never been able to read him, and had given up wanting to try after the first year.
"Just," Peter said, almost sudden enough to be startling, but too unobtrusive to attain that goal, "I," but he sighed a little, and changed course, "I think the Potions assignment was a hard one, so you might want to get it out of the way before you start on anything else." Remus nodded mutely. "And" Peter bit his lip, pale hands moving nervously over the binding of his own book, "in Transfiguration, we're having a test, tomorrow. You might want to borrow someone's notes from class today, since that's what it's on." Again, Remus nodded, but he still refused to look up. Finding at last that he could do nothing to distract Remus from his cobwebbed, isolationist silence, Peter shrugged, figuring he'd done what he could, or what he wanted to think he could, and that he could do no more. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and padded out almost soundlessly, looking back over his shoulder once or twice. Remus looked smaller than usual, like a gray shadow, a spider-spun ghost.
Well, Peter figured, nothing I can do, now is there? Not his fault, neither his duty, or something along those lines. He'd read them somewhere, but as he thought about it, making his way down the stairs to the common room, he didn't quite remember where.
Back by his bed, Remus drew the curtains around himself, canopied in solitude, and tried to keep from smelling Sirius on the air, or on his pillow, or on the embrace of the sheets pulled up tight to his chin.
When James eventually found Sirius, who had managed to elude him for a full ten minutes, it was curled up in a secret passageway they had discovered together, one of which they had not yet located the destination. They had found it rather recently, so that James could have kicked himself for not realizing sooner that it would be fresh in Sirius's mind, and one of the more logical places for him to go, were he looking for privacy.
"Oh," James said, ducking low and slipping inside, "I should have known you'd be here." He sat down in the shadows and the dust, barely able to make out any more than just the barest outline of Sirius's form. His friend had drawn his knees up to his chest, chin resting atop them, arms wrapped tight around himself, and from his silence James could tell Sirius didn't trust the strength of his own voice enough to speak. Sirius was one of those people -- a group in which James was definitely included -- who couldn't stand to cry alone, much less in front of someone. "Sirius?" James tried again after a few minutes, leaning closer, fighting back the tickle in his nose from all the dust. "Sirius, are you?"
"Okay?" Sirius's voice was muffled by his knees. "Yeah. I'm okay. I guess I haveta be. Right?" It sounded rough and a little bit shaky, too, as well as unclear. James sighed, settling himself down. Things like this were never easy, he knew, though he wondered how he knew it -- after all, he'd never dealt with something like this before.
"It doesn't work that way. That you have to be, and so you are. You're either okay, or you're not. Are you? Okay?" James had to strain to hear the response.
"Maybe not," Sirius replied finally, head ducking down to rest upon his knees, "yeah, maybe not."
"I didn't think so," James replied, voice soft and unreadable.
"You know so damn much, of course you didn't think so." The bitterness that had been intended for the retort faded away, Sirius's resolve faltering. He hadn't cried since he was six. He'd been riding a hand-me-down bike of Michael's, the red paint all chipping, the spokes rusting and the brakes in need of some oil, and he'd hit a rock, so that he went flying up in the air and came down hard. As a result, all the skin had been scraped from both his knees. Sitting there, crying in the middle of the backyard, Michael had watched him not dispassionately but also none too sympathetically, either, shaking his head.
"Don't cry, Sirius," he'd admonished, "don't cry; you've only scraped your knees." The look in Michael's dark eyes, disapproving, and half-pitying, as well, was the reason why Sirius hadn't cried since. Now, with the burn behind his eyes and thickness in his throat, he felt weak, pathetic, like a little child again. He hated feeling that way. He supposed, though, that he deserved what came to him, no matter what it was, and he swallowed back any anger, crushed any resurgence of pride.
"No," James said carefully, breaking Sirius out of his self-pitying reverie, "I just saw the way you looked, before. It's not," he went on, looking away, "that I don't blame you for this. Because I do. Entirely. But it's also not that I don't -- understand, I think. I mightI might have done the same, over Lilly. Perhaps."
"You wouldn't have," Sirius returned, shaking his head and causing dust clouds to puff up around the both of them, "you're too smart for that."
"But," James continued quickly, "I would have wanted to, I suppose. I would have wanted to, a lot. So I'm telling you, I understand. You're not right, I just -- I understand."
"Yeah?" In the lack of light Sirius's blue eyes lifted to James's face, glistening with something. Thankfulness, perhaps, or just the appearance of that something which was blocking his throat and causing it to go dry and swollen all at once. Really, he did look quite pathetically sad, so much so that James would have done anything he could for him, were there anything to be done. There wasn't. He'd seen the way Remus looked, on the defensive as he hadn't been since they were First Years, and perhaps worse, since back then he'd had no reason to keep away and now, he did, the pang of betrayal hurting far worse than anything else could have.
"Yes," James murmured, "I think." Sirius laughed softly, and then turned quickly so that James couldn't see his face, or the loss that contorted it from childish bravado to adult despair.
"That's-- great," Sirius breathed out slowly, "that's just-- I'm glad you understand. Glad I haven't lost everyone."
"You're not losing me," James scoffed, "no matter what stupid stunts you pull, so don't even think about that for a minute." The intended joking nature of his words fell short, heavy where they should have been light, and stretched out an uncomfortable awkwardness behind them. Sirius winced.
"Yeah," he whispered, "yeah, okay. I knew that. Right."
"But I'm not Remus," James said thoughtfully, after a few silent moments had passed, "I'm not anything like Remus. I'm not as important as Remus, and I never could hope to be."
"James--"
"No," James interrupted, "don't say it, whatever it is, because you bloody well know it's not true. Remus is Remus. Something different. Like Lilly is, with me, and that's something else completely. Isn't it?" Sirius bit his lower lip.
"Do you love Lilly?" he asked quietly, still not looking at James's face.
"Maybe," James said, then added, "I don't know if we're supposed to know these sorts of things, yet."
"Not supposed to know love?"
"We're still young." James grinned wryly. "We're still very young. Love is something that -- well, it isn't, quite. It has nothing to do with being young."
"It has everything to do with being young," Sirius disputed, voice firm, "everything. You know -- because I really do -- love him. Only I never got to tell him that. And then I did -- I did this. So now, I can't. I should have. I should have told him, but I didn't. I was too -- scared, and now I -- I can't." The dusty air in the hidden passage was somber, stale. James swallowed each word thoughtfully, more surprised by this sudden and sincere admission than he had ever been by a single other action of Sirius's, in all the years they'd known each other. "I really wanted to," Sirius explained, and James wasn't sure if he was talking to him or himself or someone else entirely, "I really wanted to, even though I was scared. I really thought that"
"Sirius," James said, but he had nothing else to offer besides that.
"He thinks I'm so brave," Sirius continued, shaking his head, "people think I'm brave. I'm not! I'm not a hero, I'm not -- I'm not anyone. I'm just Sirius. I'm just" He trailed off, his voice growing quiet. A little sound escape from deep within his chest, ragged and young and filled with fear. "I'm alone," he finished at last, "I'm alone. I don't want to be alone."
"You're not alone," James replied, "you're not alone, you idiot, I'm here. You're not going to be alone. I won't let you be alone."
"I'm alone," Sirius repeated, "I'm just-- I'm-- I'm alone." He clutched his knees tighter against his chest, fingers digging into his shins, eyes squeezing shut for a moment to dam the surge of emotion that flushed through him like a tidal wave. It was hard to fight it, just as it was hard to fight anger, even harder to fight jealousy. Something Remus had red him once: beware the green-eyed beast. Or something along those lines, because he couldn't remember it completely, now.
"Stop saying that," James muttered, watching him from the corner of his eye, "just stop it, it's stupid."
"I'm not good at being alone," Sirius said helplessly, "I'm good at being stupid, but I'm terrible at being alone. I can't-- I can't--"
"Sirius," James cut in, leaning over to take him by the shoulders, "Sirius, shut up. Either something happens to change his mind and he trusts you again, or it doesn't, and he doesn't. But no matter what, you're not alone. You won't be alone. I won't let you, I promise. All right?" Anything to make that panicked sound in Sirius's voice fade away.
"I'm alone," Sirius whispered, "without him. That's what love is. Isn't it? That I'm alone even if I have a thousand other people right with me, if he isn't there. That's love. Loneliness." His blue eyes were panicked and wild. James shook him, but he didn't seem to notice, burning gaze fixed pleadingly on James's face.
"I don't know," James replied, "I don't know what love is. But I don't think it's loneliness. That-- that can't be it." Sirius shook his head wildly, trying to pull away from James's hands, but the bespectacled boy held him tighter, drawing strength from that secret reserve inside him, the very same one that had allowed him to cast the full body bind the night before. Sirius struggled again, and then fell still, dropping against James's shoulder.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
"I--" James found himself stumbling over his words, at a loss. "I know." He settled finally on slipping his arms around Sirius's shoulders and pulled him close, shaking his head. He held his friend tight as he shook, praying apologies against the collar of his robe. "I know you're sorry. It's all right. It'll be all right, Sirius. Really."
"I'm sorry," Sirius repeated, voice hoarse, dry, "I don't know what to do."
"Sometimes we don't," James soothed, "sometimes there isn't anything to do but let time pass, and then, maybe"
"I can't trust maybes," Sirius said, a whimper passing his throat as it would a dog denied its home. For once, the power of Sirius's devotion, the strength of each emotion he harbored in his heart, hit James full in the stomach and knocked him breathless. James had always assumed they were too young for love, that puppy love itself was possible, crushes, strong attachments, deep friendship could all be formed but love, the sort of love that was true and mind-numbing and heart-breaking, did not come at this age. James was always open, no matter how grudgingly so, to being completely and absolutely wrong in his assumptions. This seemed to be one of those times where an open mind, as well as an open heart, proved all preconceptions to be void. It made him think, for a moment or more, about Lilly, and what he would do without her.
It occurred to him at that moment that he didn't know. It occurred to him a moment later that he might go mad.
So maybe that was what love was. The utter fear of loneliness, a loneliness left by the loss of that which you could not go on without. A loneliness that allowed you to be in a full room with laughter and song, food and drink, bright lights and many friends, but still feel as if you were alone, severed from the company of everyone else, simply because you lacked that which was singly important in a world where all else became petty desires in its face. So maybe Sirius had been right, in his own way. Maybe only great grief brought true knowledge and great loneliness, true love. It was chilling to imagine.
At some point during James's musings Sirius began to cry, great dry, shuddering sobs, so that James was tossed back from contemplation and the depths of his thoughts to realize that his friend was clinging to him, choking upon his own tears.
"Sirius," James murmured, realizing he had never before actually seen his friend cry, "oh, God, Sirius." He held him as he wept, emotion pouring out from within him and onto James's shoulder, emotion strong enough to take the both of them by force and tear their guts out, piece by piece. When he stopped sobbing and merely let the tears flow at last, hot and fast down his cheeks, all was silent save for the occasional rasping breath that caught in Sirius's throat. And still, James held him. When the tears subsided, and they were left with true silence at last, even their breaths stilled and hushed on the air, Sirius kept his fingers knotted in the sleeves of James's robes, and James kept his hands in the awkward but comforting resting place upon his friend's lower back. As if they had been carved out of stone, they remained still, chests just barely rising and falling to remind themselves that they lived.
Sirius was exhausted. He had not slept the night before; had instead sat awake, waiting for dawn to rise in Remus's bed, daring to creep there once the others had collapsed, exhausted, into their own beds to sleep. It smelled of Remus, all suffused with the richness of chocolate and the sweetness of wild, nighttime grass, and the musk-like tang of dirt. Remus smelled the like the earth, delicious and real and solid and perfect. There had never been a reason before this for Sirius to shun the world in which he lived, which was why he adored so the realism of Remus's quite unusual body. One of the painful things of life, along with one of the most beautiful. Perhaps like the moon, which had inspired the nickname of Moony before Sirius even knew the irony of calling Remus by such a title. Perhaps more like a dark forest night, with the leaves rustled by barely any wind, everything still as life, silent as a slumbering hoot-owl, with the potential for letting out a keening, piercing call into the shadows, but a refusal to do so, a longing for the pregnancy, and the sweetness, of a night without sand. Remus was the moonlight on the leaves of the trees. Remus was the moonlight glistening in the mud. Remus was the moonlight upon the curl of a snail shell. Remus was the moonlight upon the lake, a half reflection, obscured by each ripple cause by even the most minute of movements. Remus was the moonlight upon the silent and dark sky. Remus was the moonlight that settled over midnight music.
Remus -- oh, above all, Remus was, and that was the most wonderful thing of all about him. It made Sirius shiver just to think of him.
"Sirius?" James's voice was soft, very careful, cutting into the silence just as it had intended to, with slow and gentle ease. It did not startle Sirius at all, just shook him kindly from his open-eyed, tear-sticky trance. Sirius pulled back from James's arms, rubbing the heel of his palm against one eye.
"Yeah?" His voice sounded terrible, all choked up and rasping, and he coughed softly, dislodging excess tears from the back of his throat.
"We'll think of something," James promised, "we'll think of something, no matter what. You won't be alone." The stickiness of each tear's track down the side of Sirius's cheeks, chin, even neck, was rubbed off unceremoniously by the back of his hand, skin growing pink with the roughness of Sirius's own clumsy self-administrations. "I won't let you be alone, Sirius."
"I know," Sirius replied, voice firm, none of the tearing shakiness left in his tones, not even the smallest whisper. Together, he and James could get into and out of any situation, once they put both their minds to it. Where there was Sirius's will, there was always determination enough to find a way. It may be that he had to wait a while for any result, but Sirius could force himself to be patient, so long as he at last regained Remus's trust, and banished all thoughts of such love turned loneliness from his own mind. "And -- James?"
"Yes?"
"Thanks." Sirius flashed a wobbly but resolute grin, brushing dust out of his own hair. "I'll make sure you're never lonely, either. Without Lilly, or -- whoever it is. 'Too young yet to know' considered, and all that nonsense you were spouting before." James returned the grin, eyes sparkling behind his glasses, stubbornly tousled hair falling over his forehead.
"Then it's a deal," James said, holding out his hand with a mock attempt at dignity on his face. Sirius took the proffered hand and shook it just as solemnly, the shake feeling wonderfully friendly, gloriously tight.
"A deal," Sirius agreed.
It was hard for Remus to tell whether or not Severus had embraced acceptance when they met next to study, but he did not shun him altogether, which was a sign, perhaps, or at least a start.
"We don't have to talk about it," Severus said immediately, before Remus could say anything. It was as if he knew what was coming and sought to cut it off before the topic could be fully realized by either of them. Remus blinked and looked away, cultivating the numbness, refusing to let his heart speed up behind his ribcage. When he had told Lilly, James and Peter it had pounded so fast that afterwards he had been dizzy enough to have to sit down. He refused to let that happen. He refused to let himself care.
"All right," Remus replied carefully, "all right, we don't." His hands were still on the opened book before him. Good. Hands that trembled displayed nervousness all too clearly. He had resolved to stay calm, and stay calm he would.
"Because really," Severus said, speaking again halfway through their taking notes, "really, it doesn't bother me. I just didn't know."
"I almost killed you," Remus said flatly, "it matters. It should bother you."
"You didn't," Severus mumbled, stumbling awkwardly over his words, "I mean, it wasn't -- it was the -- you know what I'm saying," he finished off weakly, looking away, as he was suddenly unable to meet Remus's eyes. Remus swallowed, taking a deep but silent breath before he spoke in return.
"That is me," he said softly, "so really, I did almost kill you. I can't apologize for it -- there's nothing I can say." He paused. "We don't have to be doing this. You don't have to think you need to prove anything to me, or to yourself. You can -- you can just leave, if you want."
"I never said I wanted to," Severus replied firmly, "we're studying. For potions. Nothing has changed."
"Everything's changed," Remus replied dully, "and you know it." At that, they met each other's eyes, and Severus's brow wrinkled in a knot of thought.
"Maybe," he said, "but only maybe." For the next half hour, that was all they spoke of it, talking only to exchange opinions or insights towards their project. When they unfortunately got into a discussion about fluxweed, one of the necessary ingredients for the potion they were planning, Severus found his attention and his thoughts drawn once more towards the topic of the full moon.
"How much had to be added, again?" Remus asked quietly, flipping through the pages of the thick, leatherbound volume opened on the desk before him.
"Does it hurt?" There was silence. Severus's sallow cheeks colored slightly in realization of the personal nature of such a question, but he did not withdraw it. "Changing, I mean. I don't know anything about werewolves, anything at all. Does it? Hurt?"
"Very much," Remus replied honestly, his voice wiped clean of any emotion, "why do you ask?"
"I was just -- I was just wondering. There's nothing to be taken for it, or anything like that, after all."
"No."
"Right," Severus said, "you're supposed to add exactly as much fluxweed as you add root of asphodel, usually one or two tablespoons full." Remus nodded, bending once again over his work. "There aren't any potions, not even from the Ministry?"
"No," Remus said, not looking up from the words he continued to scrawl in dark ink over the parchment.
"Oh," Severus murmured, lips pursing, mind pulled elsewhere. For the rest of the night it was obvious he was barely concentrating on their work, which made Remus feel strangely distracted, himself. After that night, though, he made no more mention of it, and showed no more curiosity, so that the topic of Remus's abnormality was no longer discussed between them for a very long time afterwards.
For the rest of the year Sirius and Remus did not speak with one another, so that they grew accustomed to the loneliness of their respective, and, so it seemed, half-empty, beds. Remus kept to himself, or spoke on the occasion to Severus, when the both of them had free time enough outside of doing classwork. Sirius, though slightly more subdued and less cocksure, was just like his old self, except for the fact that his old self seemed to be attached at the hip to Remus. He laughed with James, Lilly and Peter and the occasional girl, but he let no one close. In the evenings, he and James planned, with the occasional help of Lilly, and more input from an interested Peter than they would have expected. They still had yet to come to any concrete decision as to what they were going to do in the way of fixing everything, but by the time school had ended and they traveled back towards home on the Hogwarts Express, they were closer to deciding than ever before.
"I'll come by and visit," James promised, "for a week or two at least. Peter, you should come along too, if you can." It was the first time, or so it seemed to Peter, that he had been invited along. He agreed readily, excitement outweighing surprise.
In all the time between the incident at the Whomping Willow and when they parted ways on Platform 9 and 3/4, Sirius had only admitted to missing Remus once. The rest he kept inside himself, guarded as precious, and used to banish loneliness in the memory of sharing Remus's smile on his lips, as well as to fuel his determination to fix everything as quickly as possible. What he'd done wrong, he'd put to right again. It was a promise he made to himself, just as important as the one he'd made to James, and above all he knew he would not break it.
The summer began slowly but not as painful as the others had been. As Sirius had not spent the last few months before the end of school solely with Remus by his side, he had no completion to compare with the acute sense of loneliness he felt now. It had all been rather lonely, in fact, but at least now he had his work, his plans, his preparations for James's summer visit, to busy himself with. He rarely went out, surprising Aquila and completely dumbfounding Michael, who had thought this summer would be their last together before Michael joined Orion down in the mines. Though Michael could not solidly blame Sirius's distance upon Remus, he knew without a doubt it had something to do with the quiet boy, for no one could affect Sirius as much as Remus could.
It nearly drove Michael mad. His only consolation was that Sirius had stopped talking about the boy altogether, and perhaps the silence could be attributed to the fact that they were no longer on speaking terms. He hoped it was that, in any case, for above all he knew that he did not like the boy, that he was different, and would change Sirius for something Michael knew in his heart to be for the worst.
On the first day Sirius decided to go out, and truly go out, he took a long walk down the road, letting his feet take him to wherever they pleased without having to first consult his brain. The day was bright and sweet and not at all overly hot, as when he started out it was still early, and the sun had not yet risen to its full, parching potential. The road was a well traveled one, and he had known the way by heart since he was barely six years old. Knowing where he was going, or wasn't going, without having to think about it beyond the lifting of one foot after another, was something that allowed Sirius to keep his mind on other things, important or not. As Sirius saw it, the importance of something was entirely subjective, and while any particular person might not have considered devoting his mind to thoughts about Remus was a productive way to spend his time, Sirius would have heartily disagreed.
He was lost in thought when he came to the house at the end of the well-worn dirt path, one that had been for most of Sirius's life abandoned but had just recently been restored, and had been far from abandoned for at least a year and a half, now. The small cottage had been painted in fresh whitewash, and there was a summer bloom circling all around it. The roof, too, had been recently thatched, but only in certain spots, as if there had been an accident, or a few leaks that needed fixing. Sirius let his eyes move up and down the house, over the haphazard picket fence and the sapling planted at one corner, blossoming greenly, like a miniature expression of summer. There was a mat in front of the small doorway which said WELCOME loudly upon it, and a pair of dress shoes rested their, glimmering glossily beneath the sunlight.
"Me and three of the boys tried to torch his house a few weeks ago," Sean said, "but he caught on to us and put it out 'fore it could do any damage at all. If he had any mind at all he'd take it as a damn warning and get the hell out 'fore we do worse to him. We can and he knows it."
Sirius winced as he noticed the number over the door, stating in dark letters on white "62 The Glen." So that explained the look of recent restoration, for no doubt Sean, Michael, or any number of their interchangeable friends had come calling recently, just for consistency's sake. Scuffing his sneaker in the dirt, he took a step off the path and onto the grass, careful not to crush any wildflowers as he peered around to the back of the house.
Kneeling in front of a small gardening patch, brown earth looking healthy and alive, was a man who was not young but was not old, either, packing down patches of dirt around seeds with his bare hands. A streak of dirt was smeared over one cheek, but rather than looking dirty or hot, as Aquila most often did when she was working in the garden, he had a half smile on his face that said quite plainly he was enjoying himself. Sirius blinked from that crouching form to the freshly thatched places on the roof, and then back to that form again, hands shoved helplessly in his pockets. He wasn't sure if he was being quite polite or not, or, he was very sure he was not being polite at all, and simply didn't care. After a few moments of remaining unaware the man stiffened, and looked up, like a wild animal caught off guard and tensed against becoming another animal's prey. When he saw Sirius, though, he relaxed, offering a different sort of smile, one that wasn't distracted and wasn't distant and reminded Sirius of someone else, though he didn't quite know who.
"Hullo," Sirius said, head tilting to the side, eyes wandering away.
"Good afternoon," the man replied, standing and brushing his hands off on the front of his dirt- and grass-stained jeans, "may I help you?"
"Not really," Sirius said after a moment, shrugging, "I was just taking a walk, and I seem to have wound up here. Sorry if I'm-- trespassing, or something like that."
"Not at all," the man reassured him, smile growing, "you're doing nothing of the sort." Sirius flashed a grin back, still studying the man and his surroundings with a careful eye, still hearing Sean and Michael's biting words as if they were still cutting fresh into his ears.
"Someone I used to know from school just moved back here," Sean began slowly, "from college. He's brought this -- friend -- with him."
"Thanks," Sirius said, "sometimes-you know, people get kinda touchy. You know," he added a little more softly, "how they can get, around here." A flash of something dark passed over the man's face, but he shrugged it off hurriedly, replacing it once more with that honest, warm smile.
"Yes," he murmured carefully, a little sparkle in one gray eye, "yes, I think I do. What brings you down here, then?" He rubbed at the streak of dirt on his cheek with the back of his wrist, succeeding only in distributing the smudge in a wider circumference over his skin. Sirius tried not to grin again as he wondered over why it was that he was there, of all places. Aquila sometimes spoke of a Providence that provided, or somesuch nonsense as that, a sort of theory that Sirius wasn't too keen on, since it left too many things unanswered and, when questions were asked, gave merely vague responses that didn't explain anything at all, once you thought about it. No, Sirius wasn't big on Providence, but he was big on practical jokes of any sort, and it seemed that this was one of them. He wasn't quite sure if he found it all too funny yet, but he'd have to wait and see on that one.
"Just taking a walk," he decided on finally, "wasn't really paying attention, or anything like that. I'm sorry if I bothered you or something. Didn't mean to." The man shook his head, holding up both hands palms forward.
"Don't even think of such a thing," he protested, "please. Not a bother at all. It seems I'd lost track of the time in the garden, and I've completely forgotten to have breakfast. Perhaps you'd like to join me...and, oh my, I seem to not know your name." A slight flush crept over the man's cheeks at those words, and Sirius couldn't help but grin then.
"Sirius," Sirius supplied him, "Sirius Black. It's nice to meet you, but I don't know your name, either." The blush faded faintly, to be replaced with a sort of white, anxious pale, and then it was chased away by another, steelier resolve. Sirius wondered if the man knew who it was had been setting fire to the thatch on his roof and vandalizing his freshly whitewashed cottage.
"Hector Karnaugh," the man replied, holding out a dirty hand with a sheepish green. Sirius didn't even blink, taking it in a handshake and not bothering to comment on the rich soil that came off afterwards on his own palm.
"Nice t'meet you," Sirius said, finding himself unable to stop grinning, as if it had something to do with the sunshine and the sweet smell of freshly cut grass and the dirt that was both cool and warm at once on his palm.
"Well," Hector said, rubbing again at the side of his cheek with the back of his hand, "now that you've reminded me it's way past the usual time I get hungry, would you like to join me for a bit of late breakfast?" Before he could answer, Sirius's stomach rumbled at the idea, reminding him that he was a growing boy, and the last time he'd eaten was a full hour and a half ago. Hector flashed a faint smile. "I'll take that as a yes," he murmured wryly, setting down his gardening things by the patch he was working on. "Shall we?"
"Don't see why not," Sirius said, shrugging faintly, "all right. If it's no trouble, of course."
"Wouldn't have invited you if it was," Hector protested, his eyes sparkling amusedly. "I'm not that sort of person." And Sirius realized, with a bit of awe and a bit of humor, that he knew exactly what it was that Hector meant.
After stuffing themselves full of the most delicious muffins Sirius had ever laid tooth upon, along with a few cups of sweet, perfectly brewed tea and a few butter and jam sandwiches, Hector and Sirius had leaned back in their seats at the small table for two, silent for the most part, but not uncomfortably so. The small cottage was clean and it smelled fresh, just like summer, so that Sirius couldn't imagine ever wanting to leave it. When Hector stood to wash the dishes Sirius, trained from a young age in how to be respectably polite in all possible situations by his mother, followed suit, stacking the dishes in his arms and following behind the man to the sink. Something had been plaguing his mind for a while as they ate, and it seemed as if at any moment impulse would take over that beaten-in sense of politeness. It was only a matter of when.
"You know," Sirius said, as it came at last, "they're not going to stop, no matter how much you put up with it." It was easier to say things when the sound of running water flowed over your words, half masking them. Still, Hector heard them, and there was no mistaking what it was Sirius was talking about, despite how at random the words seemed to come. In any case, Hector had only been expecting as much. Despite a slight stiffening in his shoulders, his body language refused to change, his hands never once stilling on the glistening white plate they were cleaning.
"I know," Hector replied carefully, "they're very-- persistent, or so I've noticed." He handed off the dish to Sirius for drying, noticing the look of intent though that wrinkled up the boy's brow before he turned his back to him once more.
"So why don't you just leave?" Sirius asked at last, wondering. "If you know they're not going to stop, then why do you put up with it?"
"Because of human dignity and pride," Hector said softly, voice half bitter, half warm, "because I refuse to let prejudice push me out of a place I love. If I let that happen-- well, then, I'd always be running away from something, wouldn't I? Whether it had to do with whom it was I loved, or something entirely different altogether."
"Oh," Sirius said dumbly, voice thick.
"So I suppose," Hector continued, hands stilling at last, "I suppose I simply can't allow them to 'win' something they don't deserve to."
"It isn't winning if one of you gets hurt," Sirius said suddenly, "it isn't winning for either of you if you aren't safe."
"You can't live your life running, either," Hector returned calmly, "you can't look at yourself in the mirror if you've run all your life. I've run for a long time, and-- it's no way to live."
"How can you look at yourself in a mirror if-- if you let someone hurt the person you love? If you don't do everything you can to protect them?" Sirius clenched his fingers around the dishrag in his hands, biting down on his lower lip.
"He wouldn't want to leave," Hector murmured, "he-- he rather likes it here, in fact. So-- all I can do is stay. Do what I can to make it safe for the both of us. Help him fix up the roof or repaint the walls, or plant a few flowers in the garden. He likes roses, you know, so-- I..." He trailed off, shaking his head. It was hard to believe he was having this sort of conversation with a child, hard to believe that a child could ask such questions as this Sirius Black was.
"Oh," Sirius said again, "oh."
"So you see," Hector went on softly, "when you love someone, as I love him, you don't-- you don't let people, such as your brothers, get in the way of that. Of-- their happiness."
"Their happiness is everything, isn't it," Sirius whispered, very quietly. "But what if you've-- what if you've done something that hurts 'em? What if you've done something and you don't know how to fix it?" Hector blinked, turning to look at the boy from the corner of his eye. "Sorry," Sirius muttered. "I-- nevermind that," he added quickly, eyes lowered to the ground.
"No," Hector said, "no, that's a good question. Yes, their happiness is everything. So if you've done something -- by accident, I'm certain -- to cause them any pain, you simply have to think of a way to make them not forget, per se, but to keep them from exactly remembering. By making them happy, again." By the time Hector had finished speaking Sirius was smiling again, a bright smile that hadn't graced his lips in a long while.
"Yeah," Sirius murmured, "you're right. Here; hand over that dish. 'S clean enough." Hector blinked faintly, caught off guard by the brightness of that youthful smile, and then couldn't help but realize how fully infectious it was. This boy was nothing like his brothers, something else altogether, a bit of magic in his eyes and a bit of wisdom buried underneath the childishness in his heart. No doubt he'd gone walking because there was no one to appreciate him properly back in his own home.
"Right," Hector said, and he passed the dish over.
The moment after Sirius said his goodbyes and stepped out the low door and into the sunlight, he had determined a task. With such an idea at his heels he ran all the way home and called James immediately with breathless urgency, so that plans were made for him to come in two days.
"Right," Sirius said to his mirror that night, "I'll see Remus smile again." When you got right down to it, it really was that simple, after all.
